Creating user accounts in Windows and assigning them passwords is a fairly common practice. It helps to at least somewhat protect your virtual space from unwanted guests if multiple users share one computer.
This method is often used to prevent children from playing on the computer when parents are not home. If you set a complex password and don't write it down anywhere, it's very easy to forget it. Windows provides a hint, but the user sets it themselves and may ultimately fail to understand their own subtle hint.
Consequently, a problem arises – how to access your account? Of course, there are programs that allow you to brute-force the password. But this is a very long and labor-intensive process; brute-forcing requires very powerful computer resources, and the process itself, if the password is long, can take days. Therefore, the most rational approach is to reset the password, using a password reset flash drive.
This method can be used for any type of account – both for a regular user and for an administrator. Most often, it is to restore access to the latter type of account that a Windows password reset flash drive is used.
How to choose a bootable flash drive?
This refers to the fact that the system usually boots from the hard drive, meaning boot files are stored on the local C drive of the hard drive, through which Windows starts and loads. When a reinstallation or similar operation is required, the device from which the boot will occur needs to be changed.
Booting Windows in Safe Mode
To do this, you need to load the BIOS. To launch it, turn on the computer and, when the splash screen appears, press F8 or Delete. The key to press depends on the computer. It is usually written at the bottom of the screen.
A blue screen will appear before you. Use the right-left arrows to select the Boot Menu item, then use the up-down arrows to select the Boot Device Priority item and press Enter. A window will appear with a list of devices arranged in descending order of priority.
Press Enter on device number 1, then use the down arrow to select USB and press Enter again. Thus, the USB port will become first in the priority list, and the computer will try to boot the system from it first.
Resetting without a Windows bootable flash drive
If you don't have a bootable flash drive with an operating system and no way to create one – no problem, there are special programs that can modify system files. Offline NT Password and Registry editor is an ideal "savior" for this purpose.
This application is free and freely distributed. Because it is based on Linux, we will use it to create a flash drive for resetting the password on Windows 7. A feature of this program is that it has no graphical interface. The bootable flash drive is created only if the user has administrator rights.
If you are trying to gain access specifically to an administrator account, you will have to use another PC. A flash drive for resetting Windows 10, 8, and 7 passwords can only be created through administrator rights. You need to find and download an archive containing this program on the Internet. It needs to be extracted to the root folder of your flash drive.
After that, you need to run the Windows command line as an administrator. Enter the following in it and press Enter:
A:\syslinux.exe –ma A: Where A is the drive letter of your flash drive.
You can see which letter your flash drive has in File Explorer. Before this operation, it is important to check that the file system of the drive is either FAT or FAT32. If it is, for example, NTFS, you need to format the flash drive. When formatting, set one of the above suitable file systems.
After you execute the command in the command line, your drive becomes bootable. Now you can perform a password reset via a flash drive.
To do this, follow these steps
Turn on or restart your computer, having first inserted the flash drive and selected the USB port as first in the priority list, as described above. When the screen loads, press Enter. It will display a list of systems: select the desired one, type its number from the keyboard, and press Enter. On the next screen, press 1 (in the list, 1 should correspond to the Password Reset command), Enter. Press 1 again and Enter.
A list of users will be displayed. If squares are displayed instead of names, select the one where the number of squares matches the number of letters in the name. Write down its number without the leading zero and press Enter. Again 1 and Enter. After that, look for the inscription "Password cleared" on the screen. If it is there, press q. Press q again. Enter the letter y.
Press n and immediately Ctrl+Alt+Del. As a result, the computer will restart. When booting, enter the BIOS again and change the priority back to HDD. If you did not deviate from the instructions and did not confuse the account, the password should be reset.
This is such a simple way to perform a password reset via a flash drive.
Password reset if you have a Windows bootable flash drive
A Windows bootable flash drive refers to a USB drive with the installer of any version of the operating system, starting from Windows 7. The version of the OS installed on your computer does not matter.
With its help, resetting the password is not difficult. If you have an OS installation disk image on your computer, you can create a password reset flash drive using programs like UltraISO or Rufus. However, this also requires administrator rights. This method uses the system program Utilman; nothing additional needs to be downloaded. We will do everything necessary using the operating system installer. The only thing is that you again need to set the priority in the BIOS to the flash drive.
Insert your flash drive into the computer and turn it on or restart it. Then follow these steps. After the black screen with the inscription at the top loads, press any button to start the installer. The installer window should appear with a language selection prompt. Click Next. Then a prompt to install the system will appear.
We need the line "Repair your computer," which is located at the bottom of the window. Click it. The installer will display a list of installed systems. Look at the table. Opposite the system you need, in the third column, there will be a letter. Remember it. You don't need to select anything; if you accidentally selected a system, click on an empty space in the table. Click - next. In the window that opens, click on the item - command prompt, and select - copy A:\Windows\System32\Utilman.exe A: (A – the letter designating your system from the list in step 4.
Now all you have to do is restart and remove the flash drive. The system will boot, and you will be taken to the password entry window. In this window, you will need to click on the "Ease of Access" icon at the bottom. The command prompt should appear. In it, type the commands: net user Name " where Name is your username. If it is not a single word, you need to write it in quotes.
After this, the password for this account will be reset. The secret of the method is that we substituted the command prompt for the ease of access program. It is recommended to restore the program to its place. Load the installer from the flash drive, and when you reach step 5 of our algorithm, type the following command: move A:\Utilman.exe A:\Windows\System32\Utilman.exe. Reminder: "A" is the designation of your system.
Recommendations
This method is more preferable because it does not require the intervention of third-party programs in the system's operation. Thus, you can accomplish this task using a bootable flash drive – it's not a very difficult task, is it?
The only problem might be creating the bootable drive itself. As mentioned above, this requires administrator rights, and most often, it is the administrator account password that is forgotten.
But this is not such a big problem – after all, you can create a bootable flash drive from another computer. You can download a password reset flash drive and all the programs described here on the Internet. Resetting the password in a working version of Windows 7 via a flash drive will take some time, but in the end, you will gain full access to your account.
